Overview

Hacklab Ghana Developer Census 2020 is the first and most comprehensive survey of people who code in Ghana. In 2020, the Hacklab Foundation fielded a survey covering everything from developers’ favorite technologies to their job preferences. This marks the first of annual surveys to be published. This maiden edition witnessed the participation of 272 developers who took the 20-minute survey earlier between November - December 2020.

Despite our survey’s reach and capacity for informing valuable conclusions, we acknowledge that our results don’t represent everyone in the Ghana developer community evenly. We have further work to do to make the Hacklab Ghana Developer Census 2020 a more inclusive, diverse platform, and a reflection in the community at large.

We are committed to building on steps we have taken and improving the coverage, insights and beyond in the coming years to better improve the support and interventions needed to give developers a more enabling ecosystem to thrive. Some of these survey results directly guide those efforts. To address the characteristics of our data, be sure to check out where we summarize results by developer persona (Professional, Student, Hobbyists) or gender, highlight results for underrepresented racial/ethnic groups, or use survey weighting to correct for demographic skew.

We looked at breakdowns by demographics throughout our analysis and its reflection of the distribution of talents.

Want to dive into the results yourself? The anonymized results of the survey are available for download under the Open Database License (ODbL). We look forward to seeing what you find!

This maiden edition could not have been successful without the contributions of Twitter and CorrelAid.

Key Insights

Here are a few of the top takeaways from this year’s results.

1. Low Female Representation:
Of the 272 respondents, 17% indicated being women. Only 10% of the 130 professional developers are women. However, this percentage has the potential to increase in the upcoming years as 24% of the 84 students are women. Learn more.

2. Geographical Concentration:
70% of the respondents are from the Greater Accra Region. Explore the map.

3. Most Used Languages:
HTML/CSS, JavaScript, Python, and SQL are the most used languages by Ghanaian developers. Learn more about the popularity of other languages and the preferences of professional developers here.

4. Most Familiar Frameworks:
React.js is the most used web framework. Node.js is also a widely used framework. Learn more.

5. Strong Developers’ Communities:
Of the numerous communities listed by the respondents (122), the three largest communities to which they indicated membership were DevCongress (13.6%), Facebook Developer Circle (9.6%), and the Hacklab Foundation (7.4%). See all the communities.

6. Highest Level of Education:
The vast majority of the respondents have at least a secondary high school degree, and 70% indicated having a Bachelor’s degree. Only 4% indicated having a Master’s degree. Learn more.

7. Primary Field of Study:
Most participants study or studied Computer Science or Computer Engineering (55%), followed by Information Technology (11.6%) and Business (5.4%). Learn more.

8. Overtime & Compensation:
62% of the respondents indicated receiving a monthly salary lower than 2000 GHS, this percentage drops to 47.5% for respondents who indicated being professional developers. Around 50% of the respondents work overtime on 3 or more days in a week.
Learn more about the working conditions and salaries of the respondents.

Developer Profile

Type of Developer

What describes you best?

The two largest subgroups among the respondents are professional developers and students. Additionally, there are respondents coding as a part of their work, coding as a hobby, as well as former developers.
For the remainder of this report, we use these categories, specifically students and professional developers, to highlight particular differences between participants.

Do you code as a hobby?

Most of the respondents code as a hobby. Interestingly, professional developers seem to code for a hobby less often than students which may be related to their reduced time availability.

All Respondents

Professional Developers

Students

Employment

Most of the respondents are full-time employees and there is also a great share of students. A significant share of the respondents are unemployed and looking for work.

When it comes to gender differences, there is a greater share of students among the female respondents. In addition, women seem to be less often self-employed than men.

All Respondents

Men only

Women only

Geography

Region

Most respondents come from the Greater Accra Region. The extent of this concentration in Accra seems to be larger for professional developers than for students.

All Respondents

Professional Developers

Students

City

City of the respondents. Zoom in to get a more detailed picture.

Hover over the individual markers to see the professional status of the respondents.

Demographics

Age

Most respondents are between 20 and 30 years old.

While the students are very young in most cases, the professional developers display a little more variance in their ages. However, we have a very young sample at hand.

All Respondents

Professional Developers

Students

Gender

What Gender do you identify with?

There is a greater share of women among the students than among the professional developers.

Ghana’s developer community may thus become more representative in the upcoming years.

All Respondents

Professional Developers

Students

Do you identify as transgender?

Sexual orientation

Ethnicity

Do you have any dependents you care for?

Among our respondents, women seem to have dependents they care for less often than men do. This may partly be due to the fact, that more women are still in their studies and that the women in our sample may be younger than the men.

All Respondents

Only Men

Only Women

Technology and Tech Culture

Wanted Technologies

These are the technologies that the respondents are currently not using but want to work in over the next year.

Wanted Programming, Scripting and Markup Languages

TypeScript, followed by Python and Swift are the technologies that many professional developers do not use but want to learn. Students are interested in “the classics”: Python, SQL, and JavaScript.

All Respondents

Professional Developers

Students

Wanted Platforms

Respondents want to learn to work with cloud platforms, in particular, AWS for the professional developers and Microsoft Azure for the students. Almost 20% of professional developers indicated wanting to learn Docker. iOS is the mobile developing system that most want to work with next year.

All Respondents

Professional Developers

Students

Wanted Web Frameworks

If React.js is currently the most popular web framework, it seems that Django and Vue.js are attractive.

All Respondents

Professional Developers

Students

Wanted Other Frameworks, Libraries and Tools

A quarter of the respondents indicated wanting to work with Flutter next year. Many also want to work with React Native and Node.js.

All Respondents

Professional Developers

Students

Wanted Collaborative Tools

Microsoft Azure and Stack Overflow for Teams are tools that might become more popular. Many students also indicated wanting to learn GitHub.

All Respondents

Professional Developers

Students

Operating System

What is the primary operating system in which you work?

Windows is the most used operating system. Professional developers use MacOS and Linux more often than other respondents. Students are overwhelmingly on Windows.

All Respondents

Professional Developers

Students

In which operating system would you rather work?

MacOS, Linux, and Windows are practically tied as preferred systems. Professional developers have a preference for MacOS, then Linux. Students prefer Windows.

All Respondents

Professional Developers

Students

New Technologies

How frequently do you learn a new language or framework?

All Respondents

Professional Developers

Students

What level of influence do you, personally, have over new technology purchases at your organization?

Unsurprisingly, professional developers are more likely to have influence over new technology purchases.

All Respondents

Professional Developers

When buying a new tool or software, how do you discover and research available solutions?

Most of the respondents declared relying on free trials and colleagues.

Education, Work and Career

Education

Highest level of formal education

Most of the survey participants have at least a secondary high-school degree whereas half of the students have a secondary high school degree and 85% of the professional developer have a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree.

All Respondents

Professional Developers

Students

Primary field of study

Most participants study or studied Computer Science or Computer Engineering, followed by Information Technology and other Engineering fields as well as Mathematics/Statistics and Business.

All Respondents

Professional Developers

Students

Does the primary field of study matter for the salary as a professional developer?

There seems no clear primary field of study where a high salary is guaranteed among professional developers.

How do Primary Study Field, Highest Degree and Salary relate to each other for Professional Developers?

Bachelor graduates have various salaries independent of their primary study field. The Master graduates from Computer Science and Engineering as well as Mathematics and Statistics tend to have a higher salary than the rest of the respondents. Graduates of Secondary High School tend to have, independent of the study field, salaries in the lower range. Only respondents who indicated being professional developers are included in the plot.

How important is formal education, such as a university degree in computer science, to your career?

Half of the respondents find a formal education very or even critically important for their career.

All Respondents

Professional Developers

Students

If you could go back and change your educational path (but end up in the same career), what would you change?

More than 1/3 of the respondents won’t change anything. Studying Computer Science and changing the field of study are on the second and the third position.

Working Conditions

How many people are employed by the company or organization you currently work for?

Half of the respondents work in a small company with less than 10 workers. Only 10% of the respondents work in a big company with more than 100 workers.

On average, how many hours per week do you work?

Working hours are quite evenly scattered across the scale from 0 to 80 hours a week.

How often do you work overtime or beyond the formal time expectation of your job?

Around 50% of the respondents work overtime on 3 or more days in a week.

Job satisfaction

A little bit more than 50% of the respondents are slightly satisfied or satisfied with their current jobs. Whereas 20% are slightly dissatisfied or dissatisfied.

Relationship between job satisfaction and overtime work

Interestingly, people who work overtime more than three times a week are satisfied with their job. There seems no relationship that the more overtime the less job satisfaction. The tendency is rather the opposite.

Salary

How much is your monthly salary in Ghana Cedis?

64% of women and 61% of men earn less than GHS 2000 monthly. 3.2% of the respondents earn more than GHS 10,000. The majority (52.5%) of the respondents who indicated being professional developers earn more than GHS 2000 monthly.

All Respondents

Only Women

Only Men

Only Professional Developers

Relationship between Size of Company and Salary

The student respondents don’t earn more than 2000 GHS but do work in companies of various sizes. Professional Developers earn larger salaries. Most developers work in companies with less than 100 employees.
There seems no clear relationship between the company size and the salary.

All Respondents
Only Professional Developers
Only Students

Relationship between Highest Education and Salary of Professional Developers

A Bachelor’s degree is associated with a broad range of salary options. There are respondents with a Bachelors’s degree who receive salaries as high as respondents with a Master’s degree. However, people with a Master’s degree tend to have higher salaries than others on average. Only respondents who indicated being professional developers are included in the plot.

Relationship between Overtime Work and Salary of Professional Developers

There seems to be a tendency that a higher salary is associated with overtime work. However, there a lot of respondents who have a salary in the lower range and still work more than 3 days per week overtime. Only respondents who indicated being professional developers are included in the plot.

Employee On-boarding

Do you think your company has a good onboarding process?

How could onboarding at your company be improved?

A clearer structure and standardization at the company was mentioned as an improvement potential as well as providing a better orientation for new workers.

Developer Communities

More than two in three respondents are members of a developer community.

The 272 respondents listed 122 communities. The three largest communities to which respondents indicated membership were DevCongress (13.6%), Facebook Developer Circle (9.6%), and the Hacklab Foundation (7.4%).

     


About The Hacklab Foundation

The Hacklab Foundation is an international nonprofit organization headquartered in Ghana with a focus on preparing the youth for future digital jobs through technology education and skills development. We achieve this through bootcamps, hackathons, mentorship and coaching, internships, digital skills training, and job placement.

Since our inception in 2015, we have directly impacted over 10,000 people, organized hackathons, robotics, and coding bootcamps for kids between the ages of 7yrs - 13yrs supported 500+ women in tech, 300+ youth were placed in jobs and 250+ youth were placed in internships. Through our partnership with IBM, we launched the Ghana National Digital Skills Training Program in November 2018, with a goal to reach 100,000 people by 2021.

Statement of Inclusion

The Hacklab Foundation believes that creating an equal platform for everyone, irrespective of race, gender, social class, and physical limitations will allow for a fair chance to compete for the same opportunity. This has been at the core of our initiatives.

 

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